The cost of Discipleship

Reflection on Luke 14:25-33

Many of the contemporaries of Jesus regarded him as one of the many Rabbis that the Israelite nation produced from time to time. Rabbis were highly respected religious teachers. People looked up to them to show them how to live in such a way that they would find favour with God.

It was customary for a Rabbi to have a retinue of followers. Those followers were called “disciples”. They followed the rabbi in every sense of the word. First, they went with him wherever he went, walking behind him, as it were. We might say walking in his footsteps, almost putting their feet on the footprints of their Master. That is to say, they followed him physically. But, more importantly, they also followed him morally and spiritually. That is, they did all they could to imitate his lifestyle, they modeled their lives after his own, trying to be copies of their Master.

Like the Rabbis of his day, Jesus too had his own disciples, with one important difference. Whereas disciples normally chose the Rabbis that they followed, in the case of Jesus, he chose his own disciples. He chose them; they did not choose him (John 15:16). However, his own disciples too were expected to follow him, some physically, like the twelve Apostles; all morally and spiritually. Jesus expected, indeed, he required all his disciples to model their lives after his own, to copy his lifestyle. That is what he said in John 13, after washing the feet of his disciples. He said, “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you” (John 13: 15).

Jesus is saying exactly the same thing in today's Gospel reading to all his disciples down through the ages. That includes us. Hear him: “Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." When Jesus came into this world, he carried the cross from the crib at Bethlehem to the hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha. He knew suffering from his birth to his crucifixion on Calvary. He drank the cup of suffering to the dregs. And when he asked his Father that the cup might be taken away from him, he added, “Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine" (Luke 22:42). The cup was not taken away, and he had to drink it.

Now, he says that his disciples must follow in his footsteps if they are to be truly his disciples. They cannot be his disciples any other way. His disciples must be prepared to bear the cross of suffering as he bore his own.

It follows that the cross, suffering is part and parcel of being a Christian. Suffering is not alien or incidental to Christianity. If you take away suffering, you don't have Christianity any more. What you have is a mere palliative, an analgesic, like Panadol or Aspirin, a painkiller. Christians, authentic Christians, true Disciples of Christ must beware of salesmen who are peddling different brands of such palliatives that they call “churches”, and saying: "Suffering is not my portion." Well, suffering was the portion of Christ. If suffering is not your portion, then whose disciple are you? Certainly not Christ’s.